Races of Isaldor - The Drik
Average Height (Male): 6’3” - 7’2” standing upright Average Height (Female): 5’7” - 6’6” Average Weight (Male): 180 - 220 lbs Average Weight (Female): 130 - 150 lbs Common Skin Colors: Dark grey; light grey; grey-blue Common Eye Colors: Yellow corneas; green, and brown pupils. Common Hair Colors: Black; Brown; Blue Physical Descriptor Natural built hunters with strong fangs and strong claws, drik can be fierce foes to fight in combat. A drik spends most of its time hunched over, in a manner that a human would be squatting. While they are able to stand upright, and could stand at a height of 7 feet, most would find it uncomfortable and it could lead to damage and strain on their back. Drik are bipedal creatures, but they tend to run on all fours, granting them excess speed. They have dual horns on their foreheads. A favored tactic of Drik hunters is to ram prey with their horns while charging on all four, and then follow it through with claw attacks. Completing the bestial look is a shaggy mane. The drik are fast and agile. It’s said that they could outrun a horse, but this seems to be an embellished myth that the hunter clans like to spread around, playing into the many stories that feed into the misunderstanding and fear of these creatures among most of the other sapient races. Their ground speed however, is enough to out challenge the creatures of other races. What captures the prey isn’t the speed, it’s usually the team tactics or the agility. Some of a drik’s bones, mostly the ones in the limbs, are hollow - similar to those of birds. And yes, those hollow limbs have been known to be used as instruments, even by the drik themselves (usually during funeral rites). The drik’s body is covered in light, coarse fur. The drik have a limited vocal range, unable to speak any of the soft consonants such as “l”, “th”, “v” or “f.” Theoretically they could say these, but they’d shred their tongues on their numerous fangs. Drik speak quickly with a snarling motion, so any vowels would be glanced over. Many human-drawn maps frequently make mistakes through mishearings when it comes to naming Drik lands, tribes, and territories. For example, the Drik people currently have control over the nation of “Taxul.” When a Drik would say this word, they would pronounce it “Tksoo” with the oo’s naturally finishing with the “lul” sound in a human’s mouth. Needless to say driks are entirely and solely carnivorous. Their digestive system cannot handle fruits, grains and vegetables, and consuming too much of them. As a trade off though, they can eat raw meat without harm. A drik’s eyes allow them to see very well in the dark. They are nocturnal hunters. Certain chemicals in their eye helps them see in the dark, but it prevents them from distinguishing very small, minute details (such as fine print on a document) from each other. Driks also have very few cones for distinguishing reds, but significantly more for reds and blues. They’re not quite red color blind, but everything from pink to magenta is roughly the same to them. On average, drik live about 15-20 years. The longest lived drik was 46 years old. Drik reach physical maturity at 5 years old. Average number of children factors to about 3.2 Demographics, Distribution, and History Driks most likely originated in the northern pine forests on the continent of Myseda. Their oldest settlements are found in the nation of Kiciy. Most driks can be found between Emyz and Tacheril. It’s theorized to have been some kind of empire at some point but it broke apart through political disagreements. Not even the drik seem to really know, considering that most of their history is told through oral tradition and performance. They hardly use writing to begin with, and telling a story with “Drikscript” is borderline laughable. The written language is usually used for maps, warning signs, things that absolutely need to be known ahead of time by people further on down the road. However, their involvement with the other races has been highly documented. The terrain and battlefields refuses to let the memories fade. While most drik tribes and countries are in the north of the continent, several of them are still spread throughout the south. Iskim, Sosol, Yachris, and Urrtk are under the control of drik leaders or tribes. There are three distinct drik coalitions, colloquially known “northern drik,” “middle drik,” and “southern drik.” And each of them have been developing separately for at least 1500 years. With the exception of the deserts which were too hot to hunt, and the jungles of the Perias coast, which were far too toxic, the drik had establishments almost everywhere on continent. Burial grounds have been found in Tanun, Hondel, and even Ibelu. There may be more, but history this old can easily be muddled. What actually happened still leaves its scars on this land. A settlement mostly of humans, udrezos, and chrail was established in what is now Belpol. For awhile, they farmed and they fished unbeknownst of the people who lived just beyond the horizons. And when they did arrive, things did not get off to a very good start. The humans thought that these creatures were horrible monsters. They were snarling creatures with sharp claws and teeth. What may have started it was a simple misunderstanding. While the drik understood the concept of other races reaching sentience, they had no concept of the domestication of animals. The people of Belpol and the other settlements repeatedly found themselves losing their cattle in the dead of the night by howling killing machines. Myths started to follow. I have a book in my collection from the time. It is a rarity, but it tells the time period true and clear. It’s a complete work on the disease of lycanthropy. It goes on pages and pages of the grueling process of this disease. If you were bitten by a drik, you’d break out into cold sweats, you’d go blind, and you’d turn into one of these creatures and kill your friends and family. The disease, we now know, is a complete fabrication, although the myth may still persist in some outback towns and villages where people get spooked by their own shadows. Still, at the time, if your townspeople heard that you had been even around a drik, you would have been stoned to death. The people wanted someone to turn to, and they found their man. He was one Shanorous Ivorian. As a guard of the town, he had become an expert at killing these “cattle stealers.” He used the fear against the creatures to build an empire. By recruiting militia he was able to build an army. They marched through the southern parts of Myseda, only kept back by the harsh deserts and toxic jungles that kept pretty much everything at bay. While he may have thought the drik were monsters at the beginning, that was not the case by the end. Fear was vital to his control, and the drik were insistent on showing their civility. They didn’t always succeed--peasants don’t react very well when they find a killed wilderbeast on their doorstep, with half of its entrails missing. Even if that wilderbeast was a peace offering. Shanorous and his soldiers spun many stories and rumors. You could almost forgive him for that (everyone was doing it at the time) if it wasn’t for the other mischief he was up to. He burned down villages and desecrated burial grounds. He did everything in his power to hide their sapience, and he killed any of his troops or associates who dared tell the public. This went on for five generations, from Shanorous down to Galvid. And for where the Ivorian Empire was lacking in combat skills, they surely made up in numbers. Like many empires, the Ivorian’s weakness was its “greatness.” It was too large to spread either fear or troops. People eventually caught onto the deceit. In what is now modern-day Shaylight, Elmont the Linguist was the first human to speak the drik language of Skergetik, who wasn’t immediately stoned to death for snarling. He vowed it upon himself after a drik man saved his life from bandits. He spent months in the drik village of Rhind, and brought diplomats with him home. This fractured the Ivorian Empire. While their soldiers and weaponry could fight off driks alone, it could not fight against its rebellious citizens. The campaign of retaliation was long and laborious, and it wasn’t all harmonious immediately afterwards. The middle drik people were lucky to not have been wiped out completely, and the southern drik people wanted most of their stolen lands back while the others didn’t want to lose the homes that they had built. The establishment of the current drik-controlled countries took hundreds of years and fluid back and forth. Fortunately it’s rarely escalated to war. Drik Culture The most obvious problem with laying out drik culture is that there are three very distinct ones. At some point in history, many drik migrated from the northern drik nations for unknown reasons (the northern drik say that it was some kind of banishment incident, but this is widely disputed, even in the nothern drik nations). This split the cultures into northern drik and southern drik. Then the Ivorian Empire split southern driks into middle driks and southern driks. Elmont the Linguist may have spoken in Skergetik, but not a drik alive speaks it today. It split into Terknis, the middle drik language; and Sergket, the southern drik language. I should mention that the northern drik speak a language called Kritig, and comparing the similarities between that and Skergetik, it seems that they are based the same language, one that no one has any record of. For convenience sake, it’s been called Old Kritig or Old Skergetik because it’s very unlikely that Kritig has stayed the same since the Great Drik Migration (which happened at an unspecified time because the Drik don’t really record their history, and they definitely don’t record exact dates). What does bind the three distinct drik languages is their written word, called Drikscript. This is because it is simple. It’s a logographic language. There are 400 symbols and they are consistent among the three tribes. Any tribe can see the symbol for “sun” and think “sun” or “light” or “day” or about its 50 other meanings. Because there are so few glyphs, each of them hold a lot of weight. In general, there are three types of Drikscript glyphs: what we’d know as nouns, what we’d know as adjectives, and something called comparisons. “Comparisons” are the most important types of glyphs to understanding Drikscript. One comparison word could mean (size). Placing the glyph alone means practically nothing. You can tell a comparison glyph because it is the only type of glyph that is asymmetric. The (size) glyph is a small right-facing “c” within a larger left-facing “c”. So, writing (animal) (size) would mean “small animal” and writing (size) (animal) would mean “large animal.” However, writing (animal) (size) (person) would mean “an animal smaller than a person.” These words are a lot like the “less than” or “greater than” () signs in Shyf. They have many of these: for size, for distance, for quality, for amount, for age, for agility, for strength, etc. When I need to use a Drik word, I’m going to the northern drik Kritig word, the middle drik Terknis word, and the southern drik Sgerket word (Kritig/Terknis/Sgerket). One thing that transcends drik culture is the celebration and display of the hunt. While the drik most certainly eat the meat, they have little nutritional joy or usage for the teeth, bones, or fur. A customary drik garment called a (Trughk/Ikard/Ikaree) is traditionally made out of animal furs. It consists of one band of cloth to be worn on the shoulders, with a long strip of fur cloth on the front and a slightly wider fur cloth strip on the back. It’s usually only worn within towns and settlements and not while on hunts or some such where speed and combat abilities are of key necessity. In the northern tribes, the only time that drik are “allowed” not to wear them is on a hunt. Specifically, they’re expected to be worn at meals. If there’s a reason it’s so the hunters don’t have to worry about their fur being stained, and a drik meal… can get messy. The teeth of animals tend to make necklaces, and bracelets in the southern and middle drik cultures. In the northern drik tribes, animal teeth are used as a type of currency. Drik hunters, or younglings wanting to be hunters, will often use the animal’s blood to create patterns and designs on their bodies. Having the blood of your kill seems to be very important to attracting a mate in drik culture, but scars give you an even better shot. It’s hard to find a drik a decade old without at least a few scars. In the middle drik villages, some people there will offer a service where they will intentionally scar you up. Some even go for specific patterns (usually similar markings to that of an animal). Needless to say that, in the grand mating battle, this is seen as “lying” at best and “cheating” at worst. While the service is allowed in middle drik culture, it’s highly frowned upon. Drik that are discovered often flee their tribe or village and take up residence in a human village. In middle drik villages, unless there’s a newborn, everyone eats in their own sequestered room. It’s used for deep introspection. This actually gets middle drik culture known as “lone wolf drik” in colloquial speak. In southern drik villages, mealtime happens to be a communal event. There is a lot of dancing and singing (which is more like howling in my opinion-especially because their songs are instrumental). The northern drik tribes have a rigid caste system when it comes to meals. First the chieftain of their village (Nukusk/Zirak/Zirik) gets to eat his fill. Then the hunters do. Then everyone else. One that happens across cultures is that an entire family sleeps together in the same area. Across cultures, the leader of a drik nation is called the “Sikem.” Except for the ruler of Kiciy. Gekru wants to be known as a “Ki Sikem,” which I can only believe means “high sikem/king.” Needless to say there’s a lot of political unrest in the northern drik nations. While Gekru isn’t nearly anything resembling a dictator, he has a habit of biting off more than he can chew. There’s a civil war going on right now with Nesden wanting to be its own independent “Sikedom.” Wars that the drik fight amongst themselves usually don’t have weapons. Everything that they need, they have right on their bodies. If a drik wielding a sword came at another drik unarmed, the one wielding the sword’s movements would be stiff and awkward compared to the other one. And instead of wearing armor, drik prefer not to get hit and dodge things that come close. Provided they don’t get the first strike, which they almost always do. The only time they don’t get the first strike is when their opponent is using a ranged weapon. The hollow bones of a drik are often used as an instrument, but if they were hollowed out even more, they could make a decent blowgun. The bone fingers of a drik, closer to the palm, wrapped together in a fur casing is known as a “drik flute.” (Itaso/Etang/Hattai). Drik bones are not 100% hollow. They have various bridges of marrow. When blowed into they echo and amplify the sound. The size of a drik’s claw in relationship to the holes of the drik flute allow them to perfectly close which hole that need to be closed. Drik don’t go around cutting off their hands or the hands of their enemies to create these things. It’s a part of the funeral rites in northern and southern drik culture. If a drik dies, their left hand is cut off (or their right one if the left one was too disfigured in their final battle). The bones are cleaned and bound into a flute and is played by the chieftain of the village, their closest relative, and their closest friend (any and all that are applicable) as they are to be “buried” inside a tomb dug into the side of a mountain. It’s believed among certain drik that the flute can call the gods and let them know there’s another soul ready to be taken to Danakut, or the starsea. The name of the most common drik religion is Erighta. It’s for convenience that I use just the north drik word for it, since it’s largely the same. The basic tenant is every star in the nighttime sky is a spirit - the spirit of a dead drik, or human, or scalywon. Most of their religious festivals happen in the winter, when the stars are brighter and more visible. And to them, a shooting star means that someone has died somewhere in the world and a spirit is taking its place in the heavens. The planets either are, or are representations, of the keepers of the starsea, moving them all in turn so they all get their chance to look upon the world down below. Drik architecture depends on the region. Most of their buildings are made out of wood. Northern drik have even built large wooden castles and palaces that can be quite the sights to behold. A family’s house there contains two rooms. One of them is for sleeping, and the other one is for literally everything else. Villages that don’t have castles, in both the northern and southern cultures have great halls where the entire populace is meant to congregate every night after the hunt. The other buildings are usually one room houses with thatched roofs, usually only used for sleeping. Most southern drik villages are surrounded by a palisade wall, but there is plenty of room and open space for a bonfire which goes on pretty much every night after the hunt. Besides body decoration, the most important art form to the driks are dance and oral storytelling. It’s clear that some of these stories have become embellished in myth and some are heavily intertwined with the Erighta religion. In one story, Shanorous is literally the devil. His goal was to steal all of the stars in the sky when in reality his crime was much more… mortal, trying to hide evidence that the drik buried their dead like most sapient beings. How much any given drik believes the myth I can’t say. Some of them just enjoy a great story, and embellishment can truly get a point across. The stories are quite interesting, but the drik wouldn’t want to write them down even in a language that allowed for it because without the dances to go with them they really do lose their impact. Stereotypes The stereotypes that a drik faces largely depend on where they’re from, and where they are. Drik themselves did not discover sea-travel. They were entirely confined to Myseda until long after the Ivorian Empire was gone. As far as I know some continents have never had a drik set foot upon them. If they were to go to Arctica, I’d assume that they’d face similar tales and fears that the Belpol people through on them. In the vestiges of the Ivorian Empire, where humans and udrezos know what a drik is, they’ll fare quite better, but it’s not too fortunate. They will likely still frighten people who don’t know any better, like children and the stupid. However, even “educated” people can fall into the trap of thinking that a drik is uncultured or quick to anger. If a drik truly wanted to hurt you, yes they could before you could react. That doesn’t mean they will. The most commonly negative belief about drik is that they have a one-track mind. That they are constantly thinking about the next hunt or the next kill, or that they can’t think of anything else. That would be like thinking a historian has a one-track mind for constantly thinking about history. Their body painting and wild dancing also has them associated with children and they tend to be looked upon as such, with a lack of respect. That being said, to a stereotyping drik, a human is not a stunning angel. Drik tend to think that humans are easily frightened and spooked. They’re squeamish for avoiding uncooked food, or avoiding the blood of an animal. Their family bonds are weaker by sleeping separately. And their communities are weaker for similar reasons. Their obsession with being covered up at all times, especially in the hotter climates of the southern cultures is seen as silly. And it’s very rare to find a drik who could understand why humans would want to cross the water on a rocking piece of wood. Wood is supposed to be steady, and what’s over the horizon is unimportant. If there’s a drik-human prejudice that’s actually at hatred it exists mainly in the middle culture tribes. They tend to react harshly to human, chrail, or udrezos who come near them. They only managed to survive by largely keeping to themselves. They hardly share secrets within the culture. Their attitude outside of it is cold and untrusting. It’s why I’ve had such a hard time bringing most of their knowledge to the forefront. They won’t… attack you, but they won’t talk to you. They don’t want anything from you, and if you want anything from them you’re most likely not going to get it. The human-drik prejudice is largely based on our fleety nature. When a cow drops dead from cowpox, a prejudicing one is going to blame it on the most frightening thing rather than the most likely thing. You starved the cow, or it died from disease. No, instead you’ll blame the thing two miles away that respects your space. At least the people who believe in lycanthropy aren’t around anymore. Mostly. Category:Miscellaneous